Exploration of Mars - Future Missions

Future Missions

• In 2008 NASA selected MAVEN, an orbiter mission to be launched in 2013 to study the atmosphere of Mars.

• In August 2012, NASA selected InSight, a $425 million lander mission for 2016, with a drill and seismometer to determine the interior structure of Mars.

• The Mangalyaan mission is a planned Mars orbiter to be launched in November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This will be India's first mission to Mars. If this mission would become successful, India will become the third nation in the world to reach Mars before Asian powers China and Japan which earlier had failed attempts.

• As part of the two-mission ExoMars program, ESA and the Russian Federal Space Agency plan to send the Trace Gas Orbiter and static lander to Mars in 2016.

• As of 2006, ESA had an early proposal to launch its first rover to Mars in 2018; the ExoMars rover would be capable of drilling 2 m into the soil in search of organic molecules.

• The Finnish-Russian MetNet concept would, if implemented, use multiple small meteorological stations on Mars to establish a widespread observation network to investigate the planet's atmospheric structure, physics and meteorology. MetNet was considered for a piggyback launch on Phobos-Grunt.

• A Russian mission concept is Mars-Grunt, a Mars surface sample return mission.

• Another proposal is the ESA-NASA three-launch architecture for Mars sample return, which uses a rover to cache small samples, a Mars ascent stage to send it into orbit, and an orbiter to rendezvous with it above Mars and take it to Earth. Solar-electric propulsion could allow a one launch sample return instead of three.

• Another sample return concept was Mars Scout Program's SCIM, which would involve a probe grazing the upper atmosphere to scoop up dust and air for Earth return.

Future mission ideas include new polar probes, Martian aircraft, or a network of small stations. Longterm areas of study may include Martian lava tubes, resource utilization, and electronic charge carriers in rocks. Micromissions are another possibility, such as piggybacking a small spacecraft on an Ariane 5 rocket and using a lunar gravity assist to get to Mars.